This week’s Economist has brought something we haven’t seen in quite a long time — good news from Detroit. For a city which has become the poster child for America’s rust-belt industrial decline and urban problems, it is refreshing to see some green shoots appearing: [D]espite all the gloom, there is a bit of a […]

Investors and the government are ignoring important dark corners of our economy where improvement is simple and cheap. “Imagine a cleaner, more efficient alternative to the internal combustion engine”, writes Washington Post columnist Vivek Wadhwa. He continues: Unlike battery-powered-car start-ups and solar- and wind-power companies, the internal combustion engine has been almost entirely ignored by […]

If we want things to stay as they are, some things will still have to change. City government is one of those things.  While at the level of rhetoric, Democrats continue to embrace the blue social model and liberal urban Democrats in particular sing the praises of public sector unions and bureaucratic government structures, reality […]

If you couldn’t see the humorous parts of the eurozone crisis, Open Europe has been keeping track for you: they have a running list of arguments, bust-ups, and insults thrown around Europe by tense leaders.The Christian exodus from the Middle East continues. This is something Via Meadia has been paying attention to for some time; […]

The process of hydraulic fracturing – shooting water, sand, and chemicals at high pressure into underground wells to release natural gas – is a divisive issue: Some say it dumps chemicals into ground water supplies, others argue it causes earthquakes, and still others think it can revolutionize America’s energy industry.Late last week, the NYT ran […]

The Asian Great Game welcomes its newest big league player: Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta. His debut trip to Asia is something of a pep-talk express for America’s allies, bringing good tidings of continued American military and maritime presence despite deep budget cuts and increased Chinese assertiveness. From the NYT: Mr. Panetta said, “I’ve made […]

Texas is coming up with green solutions without looking for them.  Businesses in the heartland of brown jobs may not intend to reduce their carbon footprint, but they are always looking for ways to save money.  Finding more efficient ways to allocate energy is one of the places they’re starting.  The Economist reports: For many […]

Embattled French President Nicolas Sarkozy (getting hammered in the polls and facing likely defeat by his moderate French leftie challenger François Hollande) is boosting his frail re-election hopes in a classically Gallic way: by taking a swipe at the Brits.Railing at Britain muscling its way in to what France hoped would be a eurozone only […]

Rhode Island is looking more and more like Greece, and not in a good way.  That is one message of this important piece by Mary Williams Walsh in the New York Times.  Years of blue social policy have wrecked local and state government finance in the country’s smallest state, and now the bills are coming […]

While the Obama administration has been squandering billions of dollars on green jobs initiatives that don’t ever quite seem to pan out, entrepreneurs without subsidies of any kind are creating actual jobs that are actually green — without subsidies and without government ‘help’.As alert reader Victor Adefuye points out, there’s a story in the Paper […]